Nobrow Blog

Let’s start off this week by getting you and your little ones in touch with your inner feelings! What does the word ‘feelings’ mean to you? How did you feel yesterday? What about today?

We’ve put together these Flying Eye Feelings activity sheets, with an introduction to consider a number of different feelings, which then help children to begin to explore their own feelings and how they affect them. The pack includes structured lesson plans filled with free illustrated extracts from the books, discussion questions and suggested activities perfect for homeschooling and online classes in KS1/KS2.

Books included in this activity pack all teach their own lessons with objectives and outcomes that are covered in the stories⇩⇩⇩

Tough Guys Have Feelings Too by Keith Negley, helps children to identify and express feelings, discuss what people mean when they say ‘tough guy’ and demonstrates that everyone has feelings no matter how ‘tough’ they are!

Using the book, Me and My Fear by Francesca Sanna we teach little ones to reflect on how fear can affect us; share a fear they might have and find strategies to overcome it in future. From this activity sheet, you’ll gain a list of useful phrases and keywords about fear, achieve a ‘My Fear’ worksheet, and a written reflection on sharing our fears ✨

The Immortal Jellyfish by Sang Miao helps little ones to understand some of the difficult emotions associated with loss of a loved one, and explores whether the people we love are always with us in some form. From these activity sheets, you’ll achieve a drawing of a creature you would like to become and a short story about someone you love visiting you in a dream.

The hi-res printable activity sheet pack is available to download here 📩

Books mentioned in this pack are available to order from our website below

We are removing the delivery charge for all orders placed on www.nobrow.net but we encourage you to find out if your local bookshop is offering deliveries if you can.

Please keep an eye on our feeds as we devise a timetable of isolation activities! Stay indoors where you can, keep washing your hands and we hope that you all stay well. Lots of love from Nobrow & Flying Eye HQ.

As a child, my personality was quiet and reserved, but my feelings were noisy. I was a stomper and a door-slammer — tucked in the middle of the sibling order. In retrospect, I see those characters from the animated movie, Inside Out sitting at the dashboard, haphazardly pushing buttons and battling for control. They acted independently of me, and they longed for expression — longed to be seen and heard (ahem — stomp, stomp). They often appeared in writing: in notes and stories, in journal entries and, as a small girl, in posters strewn across the house for my parents to find, depicting my honest, and probably unhelpful, feelings regarding the discipline of practicing piano (“I HATE PIANO”).

Sharp edges soften. That angry sadness, along with its note-scrawling, door-slamming and foot-stomping, finds a fullness of expression and, often, a quietness. That once-slammed door is sheepishly opened. This is the arc that my first picture book, Out, Out, Away From Here(illustrated by Sang Miao), follows. The story moves readers from the fullness of that noisy feeling — of MAD-SAD-GLAD — to a peace and quiet that we can all find within the space of our own imaginations. No matter how small, we all need to learn emotional intelligence, and that requires practice, care, and patience.

Though I don’t have formal child psychology training, I have spent a lot of time with children, teaching them and learning from them, in daycares and preschools, as a private tutor, as a homeschool teacher. Children have a lot to teach us. They navigate the world with lighthearted wonder, with honest and direct thought and feeling, and with an attention to the present moment. As we teach and care and parent them, we have much to learn from them — to learn together.

How do we encourage emotional intelligence in young children? How do we empower kids to cope with and carry feelings in healthy ways?

1.Remember, Feelings Begin Physically

Tantrums, stomping, frowning, fist-clenching. Identifying feelings is a challenge for all of us — grown-up or not. Young children may only know how to verbally express happy, sad, and mad. While still learning ways to channel and show these feelings, they will express themselves physically. We can help children to identify the clues their bodies/behaviors give them about those unnamed feelings.

2.Encourage, empower, and guide children to name their own feelings

Ask open-ended, exploratory questions. Try to veer away from questions with yes/no answers. Example: How are you feeling? What happened to make you feel this way? What can we do to calm you down or cheer you up?

3.Affirm that feelings are legitimate

Feeling sad, tired, grumpy, nervous, excited — these feelings are real and often important. Let children know that this is normal and okay, that adults feel these too. Share your experiences and strategies with children. When you’re feeling a certain way, how do you cope? We may not choose our feelings, but we can choose how to express them. My parents’ repeated advice was this: “you may be feeling this way, but you don’t need to act this way” (this was usually tired and grumpy, they were referring to).

4.Allow space

Children need access to the outdoors to experience the quiet, beauty, and wonder of nature. Feelings need room to spread out.

5.Step back

In the midst of noisy feelings, children and caretakers can benefit from a pause. “Taking five” was a tool I used in the classroom to allow students (often frustrated and unproductive) five minutes to use in their own, quiet way — often with a pile of books. They, and I, often returned to the task more calm and ready.

6.Read illustrated books aloud

This medium offers children language higher than their level of expression — but not their level of understanding. Books give kids a greater ability to hold and communicate feelings.

7.Give feelings feet!

Encourage children to let their feelings move. If they’re happy feelings — or any sort of feeling, really — dance! As an adult, too, I have to remind myself to sometimes leave my brain and heart behind. Take a walk, write in a journal, create art, play. Move!

8.Help children to recognize that feelings are temporary

A wise friend of mine says you feel feelings — but you aren’t your feelings. Imagine them like visitors. How can we take care of them while they’re here? What can we learn from them? They’ll show themselves out, when they’re ready. They’ll come and go again.

9.Teach that caring for ourselves helps us to care for others

Learning to recognize and care for our own emotions is a necessary precursor to practicing compassion. Encouraging children to know and recognize their own feelings will help them to observe the same in others — and to practice compassion.

10.Remind children that feelings are complicated and that it’s okay

Feelings are often more muddled-up than happy, sad, or mad, but that makes it so important to talk through them.

The world of feelings is wonderful and complicated. It’s a world we all carry within us, child and adult alike. Guiding children to carry their emotions in appropriate ways will lead to healthier children and, someday, healthier adults — capable of caring for themselves and for others. Join me in a journey we all take, over and over again, out, out, away fromhere — through that mountainous terrain of feeling.

Rachel Woodworth grew up in Canada and graduated from a liberal arts university in the United States. With an ongoing wonder with words and the world, writing has accompanied her for the whole of her travels. Out, Out, Away From Here (published by Flying Eye Books) is Rachel’s first book and is available now. She is currently living in Tanzania.